1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a printing method of an attached file, and an image forming apparatus and an image forming system employing the same, and more particularly, to a printing method of an attached file of an image forming apparatus capable of printing an attached file attached to a document together in printing the document, and an image forming apparatus and an image forming system employing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Documents capable of being drawn up, read and edited by using a computer program, and capable of being printed through an image forming apparatus, include document files for a word processor (having an extension such as doc, hwp, gul, etc.), image files (having an extension such as jpg, tif, gif, etc.), and text files (having an extension of txt, etc.) An attached file inserted through an object linking and embedding (OLE) object insertion, etc., may be included in the above documents.
When printing a document to which an attached file is inserted, a conventional image forming apparatus and system have no function to print the attached file inserted to the document. Accordingly, if a user prints the attached file, there is inconvenience to copy the attached file to other storing spaces of a computer, and to separately print the attached contents after executing the copied file.
Especially, if a storage medium such as a universal serial bus (USB) memory, a hard disk drive, etc., is to be directly connected to the image forming apparatus, and a document stored in the storage medium is to be directly printed in the image forming apparatus, it is impossible to print the attached file because the computer is not used in printing. Also, it is impossible to know whether or not the attached file is included in a printing target file before printing.